


Strain

by Thimblerig



Series: Misery Theatre [2]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Episode Tag: s03e08 Prisoners of War, Gen, Relationship Issues, Season/Series 03, Spoilers, not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-16 20:17:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7283269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"You should have said something."</em>
</p><p> <em>Aramis stares at the ceiling. </em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Strain

**Author's Note:**

> CW: references events in 3.08, 3.07, and 1.04 that weren't good for anyone concerned. Spoilery for the whole season.

He shouldn't have stopped moving, is the thing.

Aramis isn't crippled, he is sure of that. The rolling fight with Grimaud and his men, and the ride home, and the kerfuffle back in town with the angry citizenry and the queen, they are all proof that his joints remain sprung, bones unbroken. He could hold a sword when he needed it, then. It's just that, after most of a night and a day and another very long night hanging by his wrists from iron spancels, everything's gotten a bit… strained. Lying on his bunk, one boot still on - the casualty of closing his eyes for _just a moment_ \- his shoulders and wrists have swollen and seized into immobility. The cup of water on the night stand might as well be in far Africa for all the good it will do him. He licks his lips.

He wishes Constance were here. She is bluff, brisk, _bossy,_ and would have fussed him into tasteless broth and hot compresses by now on general principles. Athos… is well aware of Aramis’ disappointing life choices, and it's never stopped him patching him up yet. They'll both be tending to Mademoiselle Sylvie now, which they _should_ be doing, Aramis approves of this. It's just that he's tired and hurting. It's just that he can't reach the water that's right there and he is so very thirsty. It's just that he'll be _damned_ if he asks Porthos for it.  

He swallows dryly and says, “You should have taken the shot.”

Very low, “You don't get to tell me what I should or shouldn't be doing.”

Ah, still in ‘weary disappointment’. It would be easier if Porthos were shouting - his storms of rage never last long, exhilarating as they are, and his sunshine is so very easy to fall into. But this… weariness… is harder to cope with than Treville’s shouting. And Treville’s shouting was always difficult.    

He has feeling back in his fingers now, a horrid burning tingle, but he'll take it even so, tapping them lightly to work the life back into them. He has a roof overhead instead of slow wheeling stars and frost in his beard. He has a Porthos, who declines to either leave or go to sleep, but instead sits on his own bunk and examines Aramis with the steady disfavour generally reserved for a gimp-legged mule.

This is Porthos, who has so much quiet in him: Porthos has issues about food, and display, and just recognition for his labour; Porthos learnt to read from Aramis’ own psaltery; Porthos keeps seven manuals on engineering and military strategy on their shared bookshelf; Porthos has been bringing himself upwards, like an avalanche in retrograde, since before Aramis ever met him; Porthos still plays the buffoon, some days, when his very size and complexion are affronts to authority; Porthos attracts children and small animals like he's rolled in catnip. Aramis used to know Porthos.

Porthos watches Aramis drum his fingers on his belly, eyes still up to the plaster ceiling of their room. He looks bored, or possibly annoyed that his nap has been interrupted, clothes in glorious disarray and hair spread out on his pillow like a halo. “I'm not interrupting, am I?”

“Not at all,” says Aramis airily. He flutters his fingers. “Please continue.”

And isn't that like him, making a joke of everything? This is Aramis, the merry fool, the deadly shot. Aramis is in lust with danger; Aramis is the gentlest man Porthos knows. Aramis insinuates himself into your life without you noticing until you turn around and realise that you know how to read, and talk to aristo ladies, and that if you're lying on the ground with an axe in your back everything's going to be just fine because Aramis is standing over you taking on all comers. Aramis keeps secrets. Aramis is the best friend you ever had, and then you turn around and he isn't there, and when you wonder why it turns out he insinuated himself on out months ago and you will _choke_ on that.

“You left us, on the eve of war you left and we had to fight without you.”

“This again?”

“Yeah, this,” Porthos says grimly. Since Aramis doesn't seem inclined to leave he can hear it, one more time. “You know what makes a military unit strong? Because we all fight together. _Not apart.”_

“You left, too,” Aramis mumbles, voice cracking.

_“When?”_

“That lovely, rich widow… was her name Anais? Alicia? Same year that d'Artagnan showed up. And Bonnaire, before you knew what he was. You were tempted.”

“Don't bring Bonnaire into this. And thinkin’ about it isn't the same as _doing._ ”

“Belgarde, the Comte-your-father...”

“That was -”

“Different. Yes. Because you realised that your commanding officer had lied to you and your brothers were not there to support you, and in that moment you could not bear it. _And I understood that._ ”

Aramis stops, then, because he's getting perilously close to what he'd endeavoured never to talk about again, to Marsac-and-Treville-and-Savoy and gunshots in the armory. Because what Treville had done - on orders - was a state secret, and because he was sorry, and because Aramis had made what peace with it he could. Because Porthos didn't need his faith shaken in the Captain, also. Because Aramis never wanted to ask, _On one of the worst days of my life, when I asked you to stand by me, why didn't you come?_ Because bringing that up wouldn't  _help_ anything.

He can't in honesty call that one of his ‘worst days’ anymore, anyway. Nor is this - what's a bit of a dangle, really? It had been about captivity with Grimaud’s men, not torture. A few extra blows here and there don't make much difference, and he is well aware of how rough a band of men can get when there's nothing to hold them back. He's met women like Juliet of Episcey before. He's _treated_ women like Juliet before, when refugee trains sheltered at the monastery, some very close to knifing him, chaperone or no, some with a kind of weary, dreary numbness that is harder to forget, after. He wonders, sometimes, if his mother was like Juliet, if she'd come to the house in which he was born not from a practical career choice, but rather, desperation. He was too young when he left to think of asking about such matters, and he doubts she'd have answered - very prone to making the best of what she had, his mother, never one to dwell. He still misses her. He has a new rubric for ‘worst days’ now: Juliet of Episcey, once so beaten down she tried to murder her own child. Juliet of Episcey now guards the village she built with spit and intestinal fortitude. Good health to Juliet of Episcey.  

He's drifted and lost the text of Porthos’ sermon again. Where are they? Ah yes: “... different because we were going off to war and you knew it, you know how bad campaigning can get.”

“You didn't need a -” madman “ - distracted man watching your back. It would have done more harm than good.”

“And then what, you reckoned you could fix it all by trotting up to Philip of Spain and saying, ‘Please, but we changed our minds about fighting, let's call the whole thing off’?”

In lieu of a shrug Aramis gives a slow blink. He probably looks bored.   

“Even if that worked, what's your end game?” says Porthos, as gentle as he can manage. “Do you really think you can pull off being her bit of fluff on the side? You saw how quick people’ll fall for a spiteful rumour. Even if that old trial never comes out, Aramis, how is it going to be if the people think, if they even _speculate_ that the Spanish Queen has a lover who, oh wait, _looks kinda Spanish?”_  

Aramis hisses.

“I'll settle for her not packed off to the country or Spain,” he says at last, “with... the child... as the instrument of whatever political party can use him. It wasn't a bad treaty she had in mind,” he adds, closing his eyes. “Not as twisty as one of Richelieu’s old monsters, but she wasn't giving away France.”

“So you've been working together,” says Porthos, with quiet brutality. “When, actually, you hardly know each other. Hey, Aramis? What's going to happen when she gives you an order you disagree with?”

“I followed it,” bites Aramis.  

Porthos watches his friend lick his lips again. “Drink some water, you nit.”

Aramis gives a cracked laugh. “I actually can't?” He flops one hand off his belly like a dying fish, winces, and uses his fingers to walk it back up. “Feeling a bit stiff, is all.”

Porthos leans forward then and flips open the collar of Aramis’ shirt, and swears when he sees the puffy red and blotchy bruises crawling over the shoulder joint. “You should have said something.”

Aramis stares at the ceiling.

Then there's a warm hand under his head, easing him upright a little, and the rim of a pewter cup set to his lips. The water is as sweet as heaven’s grace. When the cup is empty Porthos sets it down.

“I'll get Constance.”

In the silence of the empty room Aramis reminds himself that he isn't crippled. It might feel like animals are inside his bones trying to chew their way out but this is a strain, not a break, and it will heal. In the meantime, he has some quiet to contemplate his errors, his foolishness, his sins. He asks one of his ghosts, _Is this penance enough?_  Marguerite does not answer.   

Door creak, footsteps, thunk of a pail on the floor. "How is Sylvie?" he asks the rustle of skirts. 

"Resting," says Constance, not unkindly. She cuts his clothing away with snips of her sewing shears and whistles softly.

"I liked that shirt," he complains.

"Tough," he hears Porthos say. There's a warm hand on his chest holding him down as the first scalding cloth touches his skin and he spasms. 

"You're still an idiot," Porthos adds.

"I know."

**Author's Note:**

> I almost finished this on “I'll get Constance” but couldn't, in the end. And those two aren't entirely broken in 3.09, just arguing, there's that. 
> 
> As to characterisation choices - I've been trying to think of any time after 1.04 The Good Soldier where Aramis actually asks the others for help and coming up blank. Mostly he shoots off alone and sometimes the others follow him or fish him out of a disaster, but ask? Not so much. (On t’other hand, Athos’ exasperation when he disappears in 1.06 implies it's an established character trait, not new.)
> 
> I also can't think of any point where Porthos’ poor life choices dropped others into trouble, which makes him unique among the main cast. But Porthos? Did you seriously take time at Treville’s wake to snark “You always knew where you stood with *him*”...? a) That's bullshit: Treville deceived you about your family for years, and b) I'm taking away your Cinnamon Roll Card. I still like you and I think it's reasonable to feel hurt and angry. Just… time and place, mate. Time and place.
> 
> **
> 
> “Do you really think you can pull off being her bit of fluff on the side?" - talking up the other side... the historical Anne of Austria weathered rumours that she was secretly married to Cardinal Mazarin, who was widely disliked by the people; Christine of Savoy was known to have lovers when she was ruling the place after her husband died and it didn't noticeably slow her down; George Villiers parleyed a new suit and charm into a Dukedom and decades of political power... Anne and Aramis' happy ending isn't entirely impossible. I can't help but feel that people will look at their new First Minister, a handsome youngish soldier without even recent military honours, and Assume Things about his actual qualifications, though. Could be interesting if he uses that perception as a tool, actually - people assuming that he's just a pretty face and realising too late that he's sharp as a pocket of pins. Hmm...
> 
> **
> 
> This was all rather drear, and I desperately need to read some fluff. 
> 
> Oh yes - if you think I'm being too harsh on either character, I'm open to counter-interpretations. Comment away.


End file.
